Crosbie Wells’s letter to Lauderback

Crosbie Wells’s letter to Alistair Lauderback is a modest note of welcome that becomes decisive documentary evidence in the case against Francis Carver. Written shortly before Crosbie Wells’s death, it offers a politician directions to a remote home in the Arahura Valley; read against the forged Godspeed bill of sale, its genuine signature helps establish that Carver had signed under another man’s identity. Its force lies in the contrast between what the letter says and what its existence proves.

Identity and Documentary Record

The letter entered the public record through Lauderback, who produced a folded paper from his breast pocket during the court proceedings. Walter Moody had him identify it as correspondence from Crosbie Wells, and the court noted its postmark: 17 December 1865. Lauderback said that Wells had written shortly before his death. The postmark supplies a firm date for the document, while Lauderback’s testimony connects it to the real man whose name Francis Carver had used.

The letter was not an abstract statement of identity or a legal instrument. It was a personal communication addressed to a politician travelling to Hokitika, and its author signed it simply as Crosbie Wells. That ordinary act of correspondence later gave the court a specimen against which to test the disputed signature on the Godspeed sale document. The letter’s value thus depended partly on its survival and on its passage into Lauderback’s possession: a private note became usable evidence because its recipient could present it and account for when he had received it.

What the Letter Says

Writing from West Canterbury in December, Crosbie Wells referred to an announcement in the West Coast Times that Lauderback intended to travel overland to Hokitika. He anticipated that the route would take the politician through the Arahura Valley and offered to welcome him at his home. The invitation was courteous but conditional in tone: Wells gave Lauderback enough information to find the cottage, while making clear that the visitor could approach or continue on his way as he chose.

The directions are strikingly exact. The house stood on the southern side of the Arahura River, set back thirty yards from its bank. Wells described a clearing on either side of the cottage, a sawmill about twenty yards to the southeast, an iron roof, a small window, and a chimney of clay-fired brick. He presented the dwelling as humble and suggested that he might see Lauderback pass even if the politician did not stop. The letter closed with respectful good wishes for the journey and campaign. Its details establish that the writer knew the place intimately, while its restrained welcome presents him as a voter seeking to greet a public figure, not as someone claiming a personal connection.

The Letter and Carver’s Impersonation

Lauderback explained that the letter revealed what Carver’s performance had concealed. In December, he recognized that the real Crosbie Wells knew nothing about Lauderback’s relationship with Lydia Wells. That absence of knowledge allowed Lauderback to fit the correspondence to his earlier experience and realize that he had been deceived. The letter does not describe the affair; instead, its unknowing civility helps distinguish its author from the man who had exploited Lauderback’s private history.

The earlier deception had involved a June advertisement placed in the West Coast Times under the name Crosbie Francis Wells. The scarred man who submitted it produced a birth certificate bearing that name and sought the return of a lost shipping crate, offering twenty pounds if it were returned and fifty if it came back unopened. Benjamin Löwenthal remembered the encounter in part because he had initially removed the middle name Francis from the advertisement to prevent its final word, Wells, from being stranded in a separate newspaper column. The advertiser returned the next morning, insisting that the middle name be restored. That insistence made the name important, but did not by itself establish why Carver had taken it or how he had obtained the certificate.

The bill of sale for the Godspeed supplied another piece of the problem. Its purchaser signed as Francis Wells, but Moody noticed that the expansive flourish attached to the capital F could also be read as a C, while a small ink mark between the letters could make the signature appear to say C. Francis Wells. Moody considered the possibility that the ambiguity had been deliberate, allowing Carver to deny impersonation. The June advertisement and its birth certificate had already connected Carver to Crosbie Wells’s full name; the new letter gave the court a genuine signature with which to test the contested one.

Authentication and Significance in Court

Moody compared the signature on Lauderback’s letter with Crosbie Wells’s signature on an October deed of gift concerning two thousand pounds for Anna Wetherell, with Emery Staines named as giver and Wells as witness. He also compared it with the signature on the marriage certificate Lydia Carver, formerly Lydia Wells, had submitted to the Magistrate’s Court. Moody told the court that both signatures matched the one on Lauderback’s correspondence and that neither resembled the signature on the Godspeed bill of sale submitted by Francis Carver. The letter therefore did more than place Crosbie Wells in contact with Lauderback: its signature helped identify Carver’s document as a forgery.

The letter’s evidentiary reach has limits. It verifies a signature and records an invitation, but its text does not explain how Carver obtained the birth certificate, why he chose to pose as Crosbie Wells, or what happened to the missing crate. Nor does it itself narrate the full scheme linking the ship, the crate, and the fortune concealed in gold-sewn dresses. Its importance comes from joining otherwise separate records: the June advertisement, the ambiguous sale document, the authentic signatures, and Lauderback’s account of recognizing the impersonation. A quiet offer of hospitality thus becomes a decisive link in the reconstruction of Carver’s fraud.